2016 Caring Award Winners

Awardee Profile

Kira Weiss

Young Adult Caring Award Winner

Danville, California, United States

Year: 2016

Age: 18

If you see a problem you fix it, and if someone needs your help, you help them.

Kira Weiss

Kira beat a bulldozer to bring Ugandan refugees home. The 31 women and 198 children had fled a violent militant movement in 1991 and travelled hundreds of miles to a refugee camp where they broke rocks for $1 a day. By December 2014, they were about to lose the camp because the land had been sold. And their plight came to Kira's attention when she went to Uganda with her family nonprofit which builds soccer fields in African schools. Back in the US, she started Home by the Holidays and raised $43,000 to bring the women back to their villages and fill their household needs. The refugees were home in time for Christmas because Kira follows her family's rule: "If you see a problem you fix it, and if someone needs your help, you help them."